“The glow of the sun peeked out over mounds of snow, the flakes falling faintly, silver and dark. In this haze I saw Berlin for the first time: gray upon gray, the new world transplanted into the old. There were people of all sorts—specks of color shifting among shades of black—taking bottles from the local späti—sometimes even their own silverware—onto the streets, into the open air. I observed the bustle of Kottbusser Tor and the swarms protesting for equality, fists raised in unison, chanting a language both odd and familiar. Aged locals, youthful hipsters, dirty punks, and hippies all gathered around a street market filled with vendors selling Turkish, German, and African cuisines. The smells were as intoxicating as the strangeness, the allure of those unfamiliar tastes.
I let my guard down. I saw a cop and for once I didn’t recoil at the thought of being picked out for a stop-and-frisk. My breathing slowed; I thought about past loves. Then I picked up my pace to a run.
At the sunrise I pause, still, sometimes, on the bridge near the U-Bahn at Warschauer Strasse. This is not my home. Here, for the first time in my life, I am the foreigner.”